Yes. You heard me. As a website developer, I loathe Flash. Not because it doesn't look good, but because it stands for everything I'm not.
First off:
You can't develop it in Notepad, i.e. it's proprietary. That means you have to have a compiler (Adobe Flash or the equivalent). To me, the web is all about the free exchange of ideas, including the development of such websites. If a 12-year-old boy wants to make his own website, he should be able to do it - with or without the purchase of Dreamweaver. I develop all my websites in Scite. This keeps my over-head cheep and also keeps my costs lower.
Secondly:
I support the W3C and all it's efforts. Flash has NOTHING to do with web standards. It's like the bastard child of web design. Sure, there are standards to develop in Action Script, but again, Action Script has nothing to do with the W3C.
Coming In Third:
It's a pain for other people to edit. Did you know that WordPress has the ability to edit the template files from it's "Appearance" tab, allowing even a non-technical user to see the inside guts of his template? That's open source, and that's powerful. That means that when I'm done, anyone can edit the website - especially if I've followed the W3C standards for web design.
Fourth & Finally:
It's not natively SEO friendly. Flash was never meant to replace a website. It has a lot of power, and can easily be used as an application development tool, animation tool, etc. But it was never meant to sit on one index.html page and represent the entire site. Sure you can use standard HTML, CSS and JavaScript integrated with patches of Flash to create an SEO friendly site, buy why bother?
Enter CSS 3 & jQuery:
jQuery's been around a while, and we're finally seeing the fruits off CSS 3. It's like a dream come true. Dynamically animated menus that gracefully appear from nothing, animated buttons popped out of the web page, beautiful scrolling and transitional effects for photos or even dynamically generated XML output. Mmmm, beautiful. I can't tell you how much CSS & jQuery mean to me as a web designer. They're like Robin Hood and Little John, fighting the notorious Prince John and his minions. Oooo De La Lie!
Less Expensive Web Development:
Imagine getting the quality of a beautiful Flash website, but with the price tag of an open source HTML/CSS website. Very nice. Saying goodbye to Flash means a lot more bang for your buck with the right web designer.
ZakGraphix - “Raising the Standard of Design, One Website at a Time.”
Micah Zak
St. Louis Web Design – ZakGraphix.com